TMS Public and Governmental Affairs Resource Center

FROM THE FEDERATION OF MATERIALS SOCIETIES: The House passed legislation to reauthorize the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for the first time since 1992. The bill, H.R.1868, would authorize 8% per year increases for NIST's laboratory programs, leading to doubling over a ten-year period. This is consistent with President Bush's American Competitiveness Initiative. The bill goes farther, however, by authorizing increased funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program, which the administration proposed cutting roughly in half, and by revamping the Advanced Technology Program (ATP), which the administration consistently proposes eliminating. It would double funding for MEP over ten years and would revamp the ATP program into a Technology Innovation Program (TIP), allowing universities to fully participate in joint technology transfer projects. The administration filed a statement in strong opposition to the new TIP program, calling it "industrial policy" just as it traditionally has labeled the ATP program.

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